Editorial: IRS scandal is much ado about not much

In the nation's capital, the U.S. Constitution seems to be more widely invoked than actually read. According to that document's Article 1, Section 7:

"All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." The House Ways and Means Committee writes the tax laws and the Senate can like it or lump it. Even the president doesn't have much say over how the tax code is written. Although the Internal Revenue Service is part of the Treasury Department, the president chooses only two of the tax agency's leaders: the commissioner and the chief counsel.

That's important to remember when GOP-run House committees are stumbling all over each other to take a whack at the IRS in hopes that the White House will suffer collateral political damage.

The U.S. tax code — every word, comma and period — is the work of Congress. The IRS is a creation of Congress and subject to congressional oversight, a duty lawmakers tend to neglect until some public eruption, like the excessively expensive conferences and the supposed targeting of tea party-movement groups, draws their attention back to their duties.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the hyperactive chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, says flatly that the IRS's targeting of conservatives "was coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters and we're getting to proving it." Misuse of the IRS for political purposes is a criminal offense. One would think that Issa would have some proof before making such a serious charge. So far, he has yet to come up with any evidence.

In 1995, when Republicans took over both houses of Congress, they announced a top-to-bottom investigation of the IRS, promising numerous scary revelations of political misuse. After a 2½-year investigation, the staff of Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation said it found no evidence of IRS wrongdoing and no evidence that the agency had improperly targeted conservative groups. The startling revelations of corruption and malfeasance never materialized. Though there were some IRS missteps, they were trivial.

Indeed, the IRS may even be on to something in its charges of misuse of funds by the targeted tea party groups for political purposes.

Reported the congressional watchdog newspaper Politico:

"The group leaders attended rallies to stop Obama administration priorities and ripped into the president's work on health care and missile defense. They spoke openly about defeating President Barack Obama in the 2012 election. They pushed for winners in state and local election races." Pesky document, that Constitution. It leaves the House nowhere to hide.